Donald Winnicott

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Donald Woods Winnicott (7 April,1896 - January 28, 1971) was a pediatrician and psychoanalyst. He is best known for his ideas of the true self and the false self and the "good enough" parent. He and his second wife, Clare, developed the idea of the transitional object together.

Life

Winnicott was born in Plymouth, Devon, England, to a prosperous middle-class Methodist family. He was the son of Sir Frederick (a merchant) and Elizabeth Martha (Woods) Winnicott. He married Alice Taylor in 1923 and they divorced in 1951. He married Elsie Clare Nimmo ("Clare") Britton, a psychiatric social worker and psychoanalyst, in 1951. Clare Winnicott edited and helped develop much of his work after they met. After his passing, she oversaw posthumous publication of some of his works.

Winnicott was raised in Plymouth in an ostensibly happy family. Behind this veneer, Winnicott saw himself as coddled by a depressive mother, two sisters, and a nanny. His father was a freethinker who encouraged his son’s creativity. Product of a traditional Anglican mother and freethinking father, Winnicott found that he enjoyed the scientific adventure of reading Darwin. Ultimately, he described himself as a disturbed adolescent, reacting against his own self-restraining "goodness" acquired from trying to assuage the dark moods of his mother. These seeds of self-awareness would become a basis for his concern and interest in his work with troubled young people.

Education

At The Leys School, a boarding school in Cambridge, he fractured his clavicle and recorded in his diary that he wished he could treat himself. This may have been when his interest in medicine began. He began pre-med studies at Jesus College, Cambridge in 1914. World War I interrupted his studies and he became a medical trainee at the temporary hospital in Cambridge. In 1917 he joined the Royal Navy as a medical officer on the HMS Lucifer.

Later that year he began medical studies at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College. His mentor there taught him the art of listening carefully when taking medical histories from patients. He later credited this skill as foundational to his practice as a psychoanalyst. He completed his medical studies in 1920.

Career

In 1923, the same year as his marriage to Alice Taylor, he got a post as physician at the Paddington Green Children's Hospital in London. He worked there as a pediatrician and child psycho-analyst for 40 years.

Winnicott rose to prominence just as the followers of Anna Freud were battling those of Melanie Klein for the right to be called Sigmund Freud's true intellectual heirs. By the end of World War Two, a compromise established three more or less amicable groups in psychotherapy: the Freudians, the Kleinians and a "Middle" group, to which Winnicott belonged.

His career involved many of the great figures in psychoanalysis and psychology, not just Klein and Anna Freud, but many Bloomsbury, London figures such as James Strachey, R. D. Laing, and Masud Khan, a wealthy Pakistani emigre who was a highly controversial psycho-analyst.

Winnicott's treatment of children with mental illnesses and their mothers gave him the experience on which he built his most influential concepts, such as the "holding environment" so crucial to psychotherapy, and the "transitional object," known to every parent as the "security blanket." He had a major impact on object relations theory, particularly in his 1951 essay "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena." It focused on familiar, inanimate objects that children use to stave off anxiety during times of stress.

His theoretical writings emphasized empathy, imagination, and, in the words of philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who has been a proponent of his work, "the highly particular transactions that constitute love between two imperfect people." A prime example of this is his notion of "good enough mothering," in which the inevitably imperfect mother generally does a "good enough" job that her child can grow up normally.

He died in 1971 following the last of a series of heart attacks and was cremated in London.

Major Concepts

Stages of development

Winnicott's work with mentally ill children and their mothers helped him develop some of his most influential theoretical concepts. It inspired his vision of what psychotherapy should aim to achieve. Central to understanding the notions of his view of object relations and the ideal therapeutic holding environment, are the notions of subjective omnipotence, objective reality, the transitional object and the transitional experience.

Winnicott believed the effect of these stages span vastly beyond infancy and explains adult dysfunctions. A profoundly intellectually disabled or self-absorbed individual remains in the phase of subjective omnipotence. A person who is superficially adjusted but not unique or passionate has not progressed past their objective reality.

The transitional experience is therefore key to a person’s development. It allows them to connect their self-expression with the subjectivity of those around them. It is at this point that a child progresses from the symbiotic relationship with their parent(s) to individualization and departs from both purely subjective and purely objective points of view.

Early development

According to Winnicott, a newborn child exists in a stream of unintegrated, comfortably unconnected moments. This existence is pleasant and not terrifying for the child. According to Winnicott, these early experiences are crucial to a proper development of personhood.

The person responsible, according to Winnicott, for providing this framework is the mother. If she doesn't provide this, the deficiencies will manifest themselves later in the child’s life. The infant progressively develops from a unintegrated drift into being able to distinctly identify objects in their surroundings.

Holding Environment

For the consolidation of a healthy self of an infant, it is crucial that a caregiver is there when needed. But even more important consequences arise when caregivers leave when they aren't immediately needed. Holding environment is a psychical and physical space where the infant is protected without knowing they're protected.

When a baby is born, the new parents are extremely occupied with the infant. Ideally, they later move away from this state of maternal/paternal preoccupation. This creates an environment in which the infant is free to move and learn through experience. Then the infant begins to realize that there is an outside world (objective reality) which is not always there to fulfil their desires. The child has never observed feelings of dependency before, as their parents were always there for them. And there are also other people with their desires and agendas which can be in contradiction with theirs.

By meeting the child’s needs, the parents protect them from negative movements in the outside world. The child just reacts on impulses, which are usually answered. When parents step away, the child learns independence.

But what happens if the parents don't provide the holding environment in which the child can grow and become a healthy self, or provides too much stimulation, for example to painful levels? The child psychological development ceases and experiences impingement. They could feel ignored, because their desires are not answered and could experience problems in their own subjectivity. The child can even become traumatized.

Subjective Omnipotence

During this process, the child experiences a phase Winnicott referred to as subjective omnipotence. This experience takes place at the time when the caregiver-child relationship is entirely symbiotic, and the child experiences everything subjectively. At this point the baby feels as if they are merged with the caregiver(s). The baby thinks of themselves as all-powerful and the center of existence.

This is because, to the baby, whatever they wish will occur. For example, when the child is hungry, they cry and a caregiver responds. From the baby’s perception, the breast or bottle then appears. To the baby, it is as if the desires for feeding made it appear; it is almost as if they made it created the very breast or bottle in itself.

Caregiver responsiveness is a key factor during the subjective omnipotence phase, because the caregiver is in a state of, as Winnicott calls it, primary maternal preoccupation. This focus on the baby means that the caregiver adapts their entire existence and subsequent behavior to whatever the baby expresses as a wish or desire. Because the caregiver’s state allows them to be so responsive, the baby experiences a moment of illusion, as Winnicott calls it. The moment of illusion, is the infant’s belief that, based on their experience, their wish for the object created exactly that object.

Objective Reality

Progressively, caregivers begin to regain their own lives. Winnicott felt that this was an essential stage that leads to the child realizing that they are not omnipotent as believed during the subjective omnipotence phase. It is at this point that the baby learns they are dependent on caregivers and that there are other people coexisting with them.

Winnicott calls this stage objective reality. During objective reality the child becomes aware that the object, mainly the caregiver(s), are separate beings and not within their realm of control.

Transitional Experience

The middle ground between objective reality (alternatively referred to in literature as the “not-me”) and subjective omnipotence (alternatively the “me”) is what Winnicott called the transitional experience. This experience is a transitional zone between the self and the real world. Central in the transitional experience is the transitional object that inhabits this zone, which to the infant represents the primary caregiver or breast/bottle when the caregiver is away.

This object can alternatively be referred to as the first “not-me” possession; a teddy bear, a blanket, etc. The child does not experience this object as created by themselves, nor as entirely detached. Instead, the transitional object is a fantasy. It lets the child feel connected to the primary caregiver(s) while they distance themselves. According to Winnicott, this experience is marked by anxiety and it is important for the child to have an object as a defense to this anxiety.

Transition refers to aiding the child while the primary caregiver separates. The transitional object as described by Winnicott is very ambiguous as transitional has a double meaning. The object is both a fantasy created by the child to feel connected to the caregiver, while at the same time it a mixture between the caregiver in the subjective phase and the caregiver in the objective phase. The child clings to the transitional object as they transition between the two phases, finding a balance between their own subjectivity and accommodation to others. The transitional experience as described by Winnicott is the phase where the infant can develop their creative self while still feeling protected.

Good-Enough Parent

Winnicott argued that “there is no such thing as a baby”, meaning that without a caregiver, an infant cannot exist. He clearly stated that the inherited potential of an infant cannot become an infant, unless linked to loving care. He describes primary maternal preoccupation (1956), the psychophysiological preparedness of a new mother for motherhood, as a special phase in which a mother is able to identify closely and intuitively with her infant. This way, she may supply first body-needs, later emotional needs, and allow the beginnings of integration and ego-development.

Winnicott formulated and developed the idea of the good-enough parent. The good-enough parent adapts their conscious and unconscious physical and emotional attunement to the baby appropriately at differing stages of infancy. This creates an optimal environment for the healthy establishment of a separate being, eventually capable of mature object relations.

Winnicott sees the micro-interactions between parent and child as central to the development of the internal world.

Being ever-present at first

Winnicott sees the key role of the good-enough parent as adaptation to the baby. The baby starts with a sense of control, subjective omnipotence and the comfort of being connected with the parent. Furthermore, the parent can be viewed as a container for the infant's bad objects, as the child projects these into the parent. A critical ability for the parent is in accepting and surviving this onslaught with equanimity. This holding environment allows the infant to transition at its own rate to a more autonomous position.

Three key aspects of the environment identified by Winnicott are holding, handling and object-presenting. The parent may thus hold the child, handle the child, and present objects to them, (the caregiver themselves, a breast or bottle, or a separate object). The good-enough parent does this well enough that the child is generally satisfied.

The good-enough parent responds to the baby's gestures, giving the infant the temporary illusion of omnipotence, the realization of hallucination, and protection from the unthinkable anxiety (primitive agonies) that threatens the immature ego in the stage of absolute dependence of development. Failure in this stage may result, ultimately, in psychosis.

Backing off over time

Over time, the parent instinctively leaves a time lag between the demands and their satisfaction and progressively increases it. As Winnicott states: "The good-enough mother...starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant's needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant's growing ability to deal with her failure" (Winnicott, 1953). The good enough parent stands in contrast with the "perfect" parent who satisfies all the needs of the infant on the spot, thus preventing them from developing.

The good-enough parent's behavior can be described with another Winnicottian concept, namely graduated failure of adaptation. When they don't immediately satisfy the child's needs, the child gains the ability to cope with waiting. They become more comfortable with their ego needs and instinctual tensions not getting met immediately.

This stage is relative dependence (objective reality) where children realize their dependence and learn about loss. The parent’s failure to adapt to every need of the child helps them adapt to external realities. The parent will unconsciously start with small delays that can be tolerated. The infant's developing ego is strengthened, the difference between "me" and "not-me" clarifies, omnipotence is relinquished, a sense of reality begins to emerge, the parent can be increasingly seen as a separate person, and the capacity for concern can develop. This way the parent helps the child to develop a healthy sense of independence. Failure in this stage may result in the early formation of a False self.

The trick of the good-enough parent is to give the child a sense of loosening rather than the shock of being 'dropped'. This teaches them to predict and hence allows them to retain a sense of control. Rather than sudden transition, this letting go comes in small and digestible steps. A transitional object may make this process easier.

The final phase of development, to independence, is never absolute. The child is never completely isolated. The parent's role is thus first to create illusion that allows early comfort and then to create disillusion that gradually introduces the child into the social world. The child begins to understand the parent as a separate and independent entity.

The Good-Enough Parent in the Psychotherapeutic Context

The idea of the good-enough mother is also important in the psychotherapeutic context. It constitutes a basic model for the therapist's healthy attitude towards the patient. Winnicott believed that an analyst has to display all the patience and tolerance and reliability of a parent devoted to an infant, has to recognize the patient’s wishes as needs, has to put aside other interests in order to be available and to be punctual, and objective, and has to seem to want to give what is really only given because of the patient’s needs. Therefore, the psychotherapist should provide a holding environment, so that the client might have the opportunity to meet neglected ego needs and allow the True self to emerge.

In addition, when the psychotherapist tries to understand the patient, they also attempt to build up a mental picture of the patient’s primary caregiver. The therapist tries to find out how far and in which direction did the patient's caregiver deviate from the ideal of a good-enough parent.

True Self & False Self

Main article: True self and false self

Winnicott used the term "self" to describe both "ego" and self-as-object. He describes the self in terms of a psychosomatic organization, emerging from a primary state of "unintegration" by gradual stages.

True Self

The "true self" is authentic and sincere.

“Only the true self can be creative and only the true self can feel real”

For Winnicott, the True self is the instinctive core of the personality, the infant's capacity to recognize and enact their spontaneous needs for self-expression. A True self that has a sense of integrity, of connected wholeness. This spontaneous self and this experience of aliveness is the heart of authenticity. When the infant first expresses a spontaneous gesture, it is an indication to the existence of a potential true self.

Yet, the True Self begins to have life through the strength given to the infant's weak ego by the primary caregiver's responsiveness. This developmental process is dependent on the caregiver's behavior and attitude. The good-enough caregiver is repeatedly responsive to the infant’s illusion of omnipotence and to some extent makes sense of it. The True self flourishes only in response to the repeated success of the caregiver's optimal responsiveness to the infant's spontaneous expressions.

False Self

The false self sets aside their needs to please others.

When the person has to comply with external rules, such as being polite or following social codes, then a False self is used. The False self is a mask of the false persona that constantly seeks to anticipate demands of others in order to maintain the relationship.

If the primary caregiver is "not good enough," they don't sense and respond optimally to the infant's needs. Instead, they substitute their own gestures with which the infant complies. This repeated compliance becomes the ground for the earliest mode of the False self existence.

The compliant False Self reacts to environmental demands and the infant seems to accept them. Through this False Self the infant builds up a false set of relationships. Through introjections, this starts to appear or feel real, so that the child may grow up to be just like the caregiver.

The primary function of the False self is defensive, to protect the True self from threat, wounding, or even destruction. This is an unconscious process: the False self comes to be mistaken for the true self to others, and even to the self. Even with the appearance of success, and of social gains, there will also be unreality feelings, the sense of not really being alive, that happiness doesn't, or can't really exist.

Bringing the two together

The division of the True and False self is linked to Sigmund Freud's notion of self, which is divided into a part that is central and powered by instincts and a part that is turned outwards and related to the world. According to Winnicott, in every person there is a True and False self. This organization can be placed on a continuum between the healthy and the pathological False self. The True self, who in health expresses the authenticity and vitality of the person, will always be in part or in whole hidden; the False self is a compliant adaptation to the environment. Whereas the True self feels real, the False self existence results in a feeling unreal or a sense of futility.

When the False self is functional both for the person and for society, then it is considered healthy. The healthy False self feels that that it is still being true to the True self. It can be compliant, but without feeling that it has betrayed its True self.

In contrast, a self that fits in but through a feeling of forced compliance rather than loving adaptation is unhealthy. In a case of a high degree of a split between the True self and the False self, which completely hides the True self, there is a poor capacity for using symbols and a poverty of cultural living. These people may experience extreme restlessness, inability to concentrate, and a need to react to the demands of the external reality, while remaining uncomfortable with themselves.

Further reading

• Ratner, D. G. (2006). A Buddhist reinterpretation of Winnicott (d. w. winnicott). Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering.